Follow Carry On Quack by Email

Monday, 15 August 2011

Create your own eBook cover. Part 1

No, I haven’t written four books. These are the covers I’ve designed for the one novel I’ve just written, Carry On Quack. Now I have to decide which cover I like best. I’ve used a cartoon duck to represent the doctor in the book. In the UK, Quack is slang for doctor.

My character Dr Edward Quack falls for a glamorous sexy blonde receptionist. So in the last cover I added a blonde in a red dress. Love that song by the way, but that’s another story. Get the idea? If your book was the Karma-Sutra you wouldn’t have a picture of an old man eating sandwiches near the seafront. I don’t know though. Back to business. The font I used for the Carry on Quack is Comic Sans. I thought it portrayed funny. And Carry On Quack is very humorous although it shows the ups and downs of a marriage. Can’t give anymore away gang!

At last I’ve finished my eBook covers, and thought I would share the process with you in two parts. Who yawned back there?

I worked in Photoshop7 but the same principle will work in most imaging editing software. Firstly open Photoshop7. Then go to file top left and click new. In the box that opens put the size of your eBook cover. For Smashwords it’s 500pixels x 667pixells. If you want to use it with Amazon Kindle you will be able to alter the size for their format.

Everything should beexactly as it is set up below. then click OK.

You will then open a blank oblong the same sizes as you put in above. See below.

Now you’ve got this far make yourself a cup of tea or whatever you fancy and put your feet up. We don’t want to overdo it do we!

Next comes the fun part. You want to choose a colour for the cover of your book. I’ll use the dark blue background, but you can use any colour you like. Then go to image of bucket and pour colour into blank image. Breathe out.

We are going to put our text in now. I’m adding my name at the top, Chris Wilt, then the name of the book, Carry On Quack. Your name will be different, I hope. Lets say Carry on Penguin. Carry On Penguin? Freud would have something to say about that, I’m sure.

You now need to click T for text button and put in the text you would like in the bar. I used Arial Bold size 24pt Colour BCE8EB. Your book may require a different font if it’s about a homicidal killer.

To get the text swirl of Chris Wilt I went to T on the bar next to colour. See above. Whatever text you have on your cover just highlight it and go through the different shapes in Warp text. Of course you don’t have to use Warp text, but in my case it suited the humorous look.

In Part Two we will put in the title of the eBook and images. By now, you will be playing around with styles in Photoshop and enjoying yourself. See you next blog gang. Ciaofor now.

Great, entertaining tutorial Chris! I use a similar technique in Adobe Photoshop too. On this website (which is my work): http://www.janja-sreckar.com i helped to my good friends on creating their ebook cover too. They are selling their first e-book in PDF and ePUB format on internet.

Subscribe To Carry On Quack

Good Reads

Followers

About Me

I like anything that makes me laugh, from the nostalgia of the Carry On films to the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. Peter Sellers made me laugh so hard I would fall off the cinema seats. Then there’s television.Frasier, Miranda and Lead Balloon and many more that have made me forget life for a while with a belly laugh.
I really believe laughter in our lives is important, for our immune systems and well being. I remember reading Wilt by Tom Sharpe. It was a low time in my life, but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud while in a hospital waiting room. Everybody in that room looked up and smiled, and for a brief moment we were linked by humour.